


The Hubris of Acteon (a.k.a. The One Where Sam Gets Turned Into a Moose)

by Trojie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Crack, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Supernatural Season 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam has a nice rack (of antlers), Bobby blushes, Ellen has a shotgun, and Dean is vitally interested in Jo's, uh, lack of experience, but not in the way you'd think. Plus a full supporting cast of Wiccans, goddesses, wendigos, and other pains in Dean Winchester's ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hubris of Acteon (a.k.a. The One Where Sam Gets Turned Into a Moose)

**Author's Note:**

> 1: Dear Greek Mythology: I am REALLY REALLY SORRY.  
> 2: Dear Supernatural Fandom: I REGRET NOTHING.  
> 3: This takes place somewhere amongst S3, I think, although my timelining is hazy and it probably isn't that important! (We're just pre-Hell and pre-Castiel, so I guess it has to be S3?)  
> 4: My version of Artemis has (as of 8x16) been seriously Jossed. Bugger?  
> 5: THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CRACK. I don't even know what happened. I'm sorry.
> 
> Beta read by Kissyn, who is a glorious enabler and whom I blame ENTIRELY for the whole thing, and Yalu, who picked up all my vast quantity of fails and turned the thing into semi-coherent English with great good humour.

Dean fucking hates forest gods. They're always obscure, they're always easy to piss off, they always have this thing about people's intestines, generally wound around a stick (which; gross) and getting rid of them always seems to involve burning down some very specific tree and, newsflash? _All trees look the same_.

If it was up to Dean, anyone screwing around with forest gods would be left to clean up their own goddamn messes, and Dean would just sail on by, because his intestines are precious to him and he's got enough counts of arson on his various records.

Unfortunately, that's not an option this time, because apparently his brother has the time to screw around with forest gods while they are _supposed_ to be working a job. And now Dean has to deal with it. As usual.

Sam doesn't even look guilty, or sorry, although it is kind of hard to tell right now, what with him being a moose and all.

'We need Bobby,' Dean says to him, trying to resist the urge to yell, because it's not productive. 'He'll know how to fix this.'

Sam gives him a doe-eyed look and makes an unholy noise, but doesn't seem like he disagrees.

The sun is going down and they can't stay here. Dean revolves slowly, trying to work out which direction they came from. Sam's bulk keeps getting in his way though, and they end up sort of do-si-do-ing around each other. Eventually Dean gives up. 'Do you have any idea where we are?' he asks. 

Sam nudges him and nods his big head in the direction the sun appears to be setting in, as far as Dean can tell through the trees. He pushes Dean gently that way. 

Dean doesn't have much choice but to do what he's told, really. 'Right,' he says, shrugging to settle his jacket back, like this is totally what he meant to do and Sam just confirmed his masterful plan.

The stupid thing is, he thinks as he trudges along, they weren't even looking to tangle with this particular monster, whatever it is. They were chasing a goddamn demon. He even managed to gank the thing. The problem is they got separated, while Dean was all, you know, distracted by heroically kicking demon ass, and when he turned around … 

And Sam isn't exactly in a position to give him the details, so he doesn't know what happened - which god they need to placate (read: stab), which tree they need to burn, whatever. It has to be a forest god, right? Or, well, okay it could be a trickster. This is totally a trickster sort of a gig. Whatever - the solution is still gonna be stabbing, and right now Dean is totally on board with that plan of action. 

'You know, this is your fault,' says Dean, glaring back at Sam, who's plodding behind him like all the weight of the world is on his shoulders. 

Sam just gives him a long-faced look. 

'I can't even - how far did we even come to get here? Seemed shorter when we were running.' Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, Dean's tired, and it's starting to get dark. This is why they shouldn't take cases out in the sticks - they get stuck too far away from roads, and then he has to leave his baby behind. 

Sam nudges him again.

'Oh, what, you wanna carry me now? Is that your plan? Is that how you're gonna make this clusterfuck up to me?' Dean's just ranting for the sake of there being some noise - the silence is starting to get to him. He shivers. Stupid outdoors. 

Sam's face says, pretty much, _yes. Jerk._

'Bitch,' Dean mutters, but he's not gonna say no to a lift.

***

Dean slithers off Sam's back and resists the urge to throw himself upon his car and kiss her and promise never to leave her again, because after that ride, he really appreciates 1) suspension 2) heaters 3) non-hairy leather upholstery. 

***

'You know, Dean,' says Bobby slowly, watching Sam trying to get through the front door with his head turned sideways, 'generally when you go huntin', you kill the animal before you bring it home.'

Dean gapes at him. 'Kill? Kill -' and then he realises he hasn't actually explained and as far as Bobby knows Dean's lost his brother and been followed home by some kind of avenging - well, avenging moose. Who currently has half a rack of antlers and one hoof through Bobby's front door and is looking extremely pissed. 'No,' he says. 'No - no killing,' he says, gesturing at Sam to calm down, 'That's Sammy, Bobby.'

'Son of a bitch,' says Bobby.

'That pretty much covers it, yeah,' says Dean, scratching his head and watching Sam work out how to get inside. He's got both shoulders in now, and that seems to have made everything easier. He manages to heave the rest of himself through and then stands and looks at Dean and Bobby. Dean gets the feeling that if he could shrug, he would.

The kitchen feels a lot smaller now that there's a freaking moose in it.

Bobby tips his cap back to get a better look at Sam, who's trying to open the fridge without opposable thumbs, or even hands. 'Who'd you two idiots piss off this time?'

Dean shrugs. 'Forest god or something. I dunno. What haunts the woods in North Dakota and likes turning people into Bambi's mutant big brother?'

Sam's got into the fridge and is rustling around in there. His antlers have already swiped a lot of shit off Bobby's kitchen shelves, including a bottle of nasty-looking bourbon, which broke. Also, there are now muddy hoofprints on the floor, but that doesn't exactly do much to the general state of the place except make it really confusing for an experienced tracker.

Bobby squints at Sam's bus-sized hindquarters. 'Unless you're okay with cannibalism, Sam, there ain't much in there you'd wanna eat,' he points out. 

Sam pulls his head out awkwardly and backs up so he can turn and face them. He's somehow managed to get his stupid big mouth wrapped around a bottle of beer, and his expression says _I need a drink_. Dean ends up pouring the beer into a bowl and putting it on the table, and the three of them sit around into the small hours, trying to work out what the hell to do.

***

Moose snore, it turns out. Sam backs himself into a corner of Bobby's living room and drops off, massive head drooping, and Dean tries to get to sleep on the couch and can't. Sam's new nose echoes like a cuss in a cathedral, so Dean gets up instead.

All Bobby's books on gods, forest spirits, tricksters, and anything with a suspicious yen for venison are out on his desk. They're light on moose-related lore, turns out. Dean reaches for Sam's laptop instead, and just googles 'moose', because sometimes you gotta start at the beginning. 

Jeez, people really like taking pictures of moose.

Wikipedia tells him not to piss them off (and has a handy list of warning signs, excellent) and that their lips are prehensile, which he knows because he watched Sam turn a doorknob earlier this evening when he needed to go outside because there's no way he was gonna fit in the can here. They shed their antlers in winter. Dean peers at Sam's head and then back at the pictures and figures they must be still in the process of growing back. Thank God, because those suckers apparently get way bigger. And possibly pointier.

He skips the stuff about moose breeding because he figures that, in some weird way, probably counts as invasion of privacy. And is irrelevant, because if he has anything to do with it Sam is gonna be human again before the whole 'breeding season' thing becomes an issue.

"Do not drive into a moose" seems to be Wikipedia's top tip for the day, which he will totally bear in mind. Do not drive with a moose as your copilot, he would like to add. Like, seriously. He does not want to relive the hour and a half it took them to fold Sam into the Impala, and she has a roomy back seat. Which is never going to be the same again, by the way.

He sits and thinks for a while, while Sam makes weird snuffly honking noises and occasionally stamps a surprisingly delicate hoof, and then tries searching 'deer', because hey, it's not like the supernatural is ever particularly picky about biology (unless it's talking about what exact kind of wood you need to fashion into a stake and stab someone with - Dean's botany is A-grade these days), and moose are basically deer, right? Maybe there'll be something. 

Then he tries 'deer god'.

Turns out there _is_ a god of deer, except she's a goddess. Dean keeps reading. Greek Mythology is crazy shit - all revenge and seduction, and apples, for some reason. Artemis is a hot hunter chick with a thing for hanging around in the nude with deer, and according to legend ...

Sam wakes up with a violent snort when Dean slams the laptop shut and growls 'Son of a _bitch_ -' and then tries to back further into the corner he's already backed into when Dean gets up to shake his finger under Sam's stupid enormous moose nose.

'I can't believe you, man,' Dean says. Sam turns his head to look at Dean with one huge brown eye, and apparently he doesn't even need to be his normal species to use the puppy-dog expression. 'I'm busy saving your stupid frigging ass and you can't keep your eyes to yourself for ten goddamn seconds -'

'What's goin' on down there?' Bobby yells down the stairs. 'Can't you let a man sleep?'

'I know what happened to Sam!' Dean bellows back up. 'He's a goddamn peeping Tom, is what!' 

Sam glares. Like puppy-dog-eyes, apparently bitchface also transcends species.

***

It's four am, but that doesn't matter. When you don't know what you're dealing with, you treat every situation like a timebomb, and most nasty little folksy pranks have deadlines on them. Dean does not want this to be permanent just because it took them too long to get their asses into gear.

Bobby gives Sam's laptop a pissy look and gets down some different books, now that they know what they're dealing with, and sends Dean off to clean up the kitchen while he gets some work done. Sam follows when he realises he can't turn the pages of books without leaving moose drool on them, which Bobby doesn't appreciate, and so Dean uses him to hang dirty dish towels off to dry when they get soaked. 

Sam attempts to mop the floor with the mop-handle wedged between his teeth, but it doesn't work very well. He mostly just ends up smearing the mud and crappy bourbon more evenly over the floor. Still, it's cleaner than before. Dean takes the mop off him and leans on it, trying not to laugh. 

'Maybe you should stay like this,' he offers, watching Sam trying to flick a dish towel off his antlers and failing. 'You're a lot more use.' 

Sam eyeballs him, and then lowers his head very deliberately. Dean stares down the business end of Sam's antlers and suddenly decides he doesn't want to roughhouse with his brother any more. But there isn't much room in here to dodge and so he ends up jammed up against the kitchen cabinets with Sam in a weird headlock, one arm around his … chin, maybe? … and the other hand grabbing an ear, while Sam snorts and jerks his head up and down trying to break Dean's hold.

It's like being eighteen again, the year Sam's growth spurts turned into some kind of freak mutation thing and he put on about four inches overnight, and could suddenly hang Dean upside down by his ankles when before Dean'd been able to basically hogtie him in under thirty seconds. That summer they'd wrecked a lot of motel furnishings before Dad tore them both a new one and they declared a truce. 

'You're getting slow, Sammy,' Dean taunts him, yanking on his furry ear. 'You must weigh, what, two tons, and I still got you.'

Sam makes a noise like a brass band falling down the stairs and wrenches himself sideways, knocking Dean to the floor. Dean manages to catch Sam by an antler as he flails and falls, and they end up nose to nose, Dean flat on his back and wheezing. Sam's grinning, if moose can grin. He totally thinks he's won. And when Dean gets his breath back, he's going to totally show him he's wrong.

'Hey, you two,' says Bobby, putting down his current book with a thud and reaching for a bottle. 'Stop wreckin' my kitchen and come over here. I think I got somethin' for you. But I hope you haven't pissed off Jo Harvelle lately.' He looks at Dean over the rim of his glass like he thinks Dean's the most likely suspect.

Dean ignores him and pulls a chair up to the desk, and Sam looms over his shoulder, clearly trying to read Bobby's book upside down. 'Jo? What's Jo got to do with this?' Dean asks.'You saying we can't handle this ourselves?' 

'Well, if this is Artemis you're dealin' with,' says Bobby, 'she ain't real keen on the menfolk. So if you wanna talk Sam's way out of this, your usual MO isn't gonna cut it.' He gives Dean a look that's kinda worryingly knowledgeable. 'You're gonna need someone to do the talkin' for you. Someone Artemis is gonna play ball with.'

'I'm guessing you mean a woman,' says Dean. It's not really a big leap, what with Artemis's main areas of expertise and such. Although he's a hunter, right? She's the goddess of hunters as well as everything else. So what's the big deal? He can't …commune with his patron, or whatever you call it?

'That I do,' says Bobby, taking another drink. 

There's something Bobby's not spelling out here, which isn't like him. Dean tries again. 'So why Jo particularly?' he asks. 'There's plenty of female hunters.' Well, not plenty, exactly, but there's a few. And Jo's kind of the least experienced of the lot, too. She wouldn't be Dean's first pick, let's put it that way.

'Because,' says Bobby, and if Dean didn't know better, he'd swear the old coot was squirming. 'I figure, she's probably still, well, qualified.'

'Qualified?' Dean asks, with slow horror dawning on him. 

'She still lives at home, and her momma's got a shotgun,' says Bobby. He downs the rest of his drink in one go, Sam snorts in what sounds like shock, or laughter, or both, and Dean gets a scalp full of moose slobber and a sudden, desperately thankful memory of all the times he thought about it and decided not to put the moves on Jo while her mom was around. 

Least experienced. Yeah. 

'Right,' he says, because it's better than _Oh, God._ 'Well, we should probably hold off until morning to call her,' he adds. It's only common courtesy, isn't it? Dean would never ever put off an uncomfortable job. No sirree.

Bobby rolls his eyes. 'Well yeah,' he says. 'It's five am. Would you like to get woken up at five am by an idiot who wants to know if you're still a virgin? I'm goin' back to bed.'

***

After a (late) breakfast, Bobby hands Dean the phone. 'Better hope you can do this without anyone gettin' the wrong impression,' he says. 

'Thanks, Bobby, that's real reassuring.'

Dean knows a hundred ways to ask a girl for this very important piece of intel, but now he tries to think of one they all seem kinda skeevy. Plus he's never had to use any of them with Sammy looming over his shoulder or Bobby giving him the stinkeye from across the room before.

He squares his shoulders and dials the number for the roadhouse. And praise be to anything that might be out there, it's Jo that picks up.

'Harvelle's.'

'Jo?' says Dean, trying hard to sound casual. 'It's Dean Winchester.'

'Dean? Uh, hi. What's -?'

And then there's a click of another handset being picked up, and Ellen's voice crackles down the line. 'Hiya Dean,' she drawls, and Dean remembers Bobby's crack about her shotgun and swallows hard.

'Hey, Ellen -'

'Is this a social call?' she asks, still really calm and pleasant but with a steel edge to it. From the sound of quiet breathing in the background, Dean guesses Jo's still on the line, waiting to hear what he says, and he'll be damned before he asks her straight-up what her V-card status is over the phone while her mom's listening. So. Change of plan time.

He clears his throat. 'Not exactly,' he says. Before she can cut in again, he ploughs on. 'I need Jo's help with a hunt.'

'Oh really,' says Ellen, voice gone cold. 'And why can't your brother help you out?'

'Sam's got himself into a bit of trouble,' Dean admits. 'I need Jo's help to get him out of it. I promise I won't let her get hurt.'

There's a sarcastic snort that sounds like it's from Jo.

'No,' says Ellen, flatly, and Dean's heart kind of sinks. He shoots a look at Bobby that he hopes says they're gonna need a Plan B here -

And then there's the clatter of two phones getting put down, and Dean hears some shouting in the background, and he's almost about to hang up because he reckons they've actually forgotten about him, but then Jo picks up again. 

'Hi Dean,' she says again, all brisk and professional, and he can practically hear her shoving a lock of hair behind her ear and glaring at her mother. 'I think I can help you out. Where are you?'

***

While they wait for the virtue cavalry to ride on into town, Bobby sits down and keeps reading, drinking, and muttering things about goddamn idiots who tangle with goddamn Greek gods in goddamn North Dakota, Dean sits down and field-strips and cleans all the weapons he can find, and Sam folds his spindly legs up underneath himself and sits down in the kitchen to sulk, because he's got nothing else to do and no goddamn opposable thumbs to do it with even if he did. 

'How does some washed-up ancient goddess even get the juice to turn people into animals, anyway?' Dean asks after a while, when he's done with the guns and has moved onto sharpening knives. 'Transfiguration takes serious mojo, doesn't it? Gods get their power from worshippers. So how many souls can this Artemis chick still draw on?'

'More than you'd think,' says Bobby, paging through something that looks like it actually might be written in English, which makes a change. 'She's persistent, alright - still being worshipped today.'

'Some kind of a cult?' Dean asks. 'Like those nutjobs with the scarecrow? Did we chase that demon into some kinda nasty pagan ritual thing without noticing? Gross.'

Bobby rolls his eyes over the top of the book. 'Just cos it don't take place in a church doesn't mean it's not a religion - have a bit of respect. There's a branch of Wicca dedicated to this goddess. She still packs a punch for the minor leagues, Dean - don't underestimate her.'

Dean admires the edge he's just finished putting on his machete. 'I'm not gonna underestimate her,' he says. 'I'm gonna ask her very nicely to give my brother his body back. And then -'

'You can't kill her, Dean.' Bobby puts the book down. 'I'm serious.'

Dean puts down the machete and picks up a silver knife. 'Gimme one good reason,' he says. No-one's tried to tell him what he can and can't kill for _years_. He's a grownup, he can kill whatever he goddamn pleases.

Bobby says, 'She hasn't killed you,' as if Dean hasn't noticed.

'And how far d'you think we'd get, Bobby, if we only killed things that killed us first?'

'Okay, how about, you can't kill her, you need her to turn Sam back. So unless you fancy hitchin' a horse box to the back of your car for the rest of your days ...'

Sam snorts a definite 'no' from the kitchen, and Dean is totally in agreement with him. 'Okay, say you're right,' he says. 'You think we're gonna get Sam turned back by having a tea party with this chick?'

Bobby is always right. It's pretty much a fundamental law of the universe. But at least he'll talk it through with you, or, well, argue it through with you. In this case he puts on his 'you idiot' face and says, 'No, Dean, I think you're gonna have to _negotiate_.'

Dean pretends he doesn't see Sam shove his nose under one leg, like moose can facepalm. 

***

Sam's dinner is basically a bucket full of dead weeds Dean pulled up from where they were growing around broken-down old cars. It … looks kinda like hay, he guesses. It's definitely plants. Bobby's not the salad type, so Sam doesn't have a lot of choice.

Bobby's fridge is kind of full of home-butchered venison some hard-up backwoods hunter traded him for goods and services of the occult research kind, and without discussing it in any way, Bobby and Dean decide not to have dinner. They have beer, instead.

Sam snorts and scrunches his way through the bucketful of not-hay, and headbutts Dean on the shoulder afterwards, like 'thanks'. He picks the bucket up by its handle and manages to get it in the sink, and then lets himself out into the yard, where the shadows are lengthening, presumably to take care of business.

Dean watches him go, and Bobby apparently watches Dean watch him, because he says, 'If he gets stuck like that -'

'He's not gonna get stuck like that,' Dean growls, tipping his beer bottle up for the last swallow.

Bobby shrugs. 'Yeah, well.'

'Would it kill you to think positive, just for five minutes?' Dean asks. 

'Cos I have so much precedent for lookin' on the bright side,' says Bobby. He sighs. 'Dean, I know I spend a lot of time tellin' you things you don't wanna hear lately, but I'm not doin' it for kicks, you understand me? You gotta think about this. You and Sam, both of you - I worry about what's gonna happen when one of you goes down for good.'

'Yeah, well,' says Dean. Bobby looks at him, and Dean can't handle it if Bobby, of all people, pities them. 'It does not take this long to take a goddamn crap,' he says, getting up and stomping out the door. 'I'm gonna go check on him.'

Outside it's pretty much dark, or near as dammit. The yellow light spilling out of Bobby's windows turns every wrecked old car into a long brown shadow, and the moon overhead is a hair over waxing gibbous (you get good at the phases of the moon, in Dean's line of work. It pays to be able to line up every bloody corpse with the lunar calendar, just so you can cross off werewolves to start with). Dean finds Sam in the garage, with his twiggy legs tucked under the bulk of the rest of him, peering up at the moon through the open door. 

'What, were you planning on staying out here?' Dean demands, resisting the urge to put his hands on his hips like a bossy soccer mom. 'Get your ass back in the house, Sam.'

Sam snorts and shakes his head. Dean can't help but notice that his ears flap when he does that, and files it away for later, when this is funny again. 

'Dude, we don't even make the demons we're exorcising stay in the garage,' Dean points out. 

Sam puts his head down on his … knees? Elbows? and sighs heavily. He's clearly about to get a heavy-duty mope on. So Dean flops down next to him and attempts to put his arm around his brother's shoulder. Turns out that's even harder now than it used to be. 'Come on, Sammy,' he says. 'We gotta fight this like we fight everything else. No going all "gentle forest creature" on me.'

Sam lifts his head and fixes Dean squarely with one big brown reproachful eye, and then pushes him, hard. Dean goes over but gets his feet under him so he can roll back and get Sam in another headlock. 

It's kinda like getting a Sherman tank in a headlock, but Sam's pissy expression is totally worth it. 'We're going back inside,' says Dean. 'Don't make me pull you by your antlers, bitch.'

Sam rolls his eyes, but he does follow Dean back inside when Dean goes, so Dean's calling it a win. So there. He has _awesome_ negotiation skills.

***

They spend the morning working the kinks and rattles out of the Impala's engine, because the sun is shining and Bobby wanted them out from underfoot. With his head under the hood Dean can barely tell it's four-legged Sam and not two-legged Sam working with him, except for the lack of running Mills and Boon dialogue about how they have repressed feelings they need to talk over. He can still hold his hand out and demand a ring-spanner and get given one, even if it's kind of drool-covered from where Sam has to pick it up in his mouth. 

'Hand me that -' he says, just as he gets the prickling sensation on the back of his neck that means someone has managed to sneak up on him. He and Sam whirl around at the same time. 

There's a clink as Sam drops a socket-wrench into the dirt. 

'Hey Dean,' says Jo Harvelle, who has a duffle bag over one shoulder and a shotgun over the other. She looks at Sam and quirks an eyebrow. 'Hey Sam. Nice rack.'

'Nah, I picked the moose up at the SPCA - Sam's inside baking scones,' says Dean drily, wiping his oily hands on the seat of his jeans. Jo's wearing a pair of shorts that he would have totally approved of a week ago but which today make him want to enroll her in a convent. She gives him a look. 'Okay, okay. This kinda isn't our finest moment,' he admits.

Jo shakes her head, disbelieving. 'So the Winchesters really are a man down,' she says. 'I'm flattered it was me you called to back you up.' 

Dean shrugs. 'Yeah, well, thanks for coming all this way at such short notice,' he says. 'I know your mom isn't real keen on you hunting.'

'My mom still hasn't worked out I'm a grownup,' says Jo. 'If I want to hunt, she can't stop me. So you wanna tell me why Sam's a moose?' she asks. 'Is it a glamour? Some kind of witch's spell?' Her eyes sparkle. 'Is this the animal form of his innermost soul or something?' 

Sam makes a noise like a cow with a puncture. He clearly does not think his innermost soul is Bambi Hulk. 

'He pissed off the goddess of deer,' says Dean, feeling weirdly protective of his baby brother even though 'moose' is a pretty badass spirit animal. 'If he'd pissed off the goddess of fish he'd probably be a guppy. I don't think there's much rhyme or reason to it.'

Jo looks up at Dean like she's trying really hard not to laugh. 'Okay then,' she says. 'So what do you need me for?'

Dean squirms. Again. The only line he can come up with is still basically 'Is this your first time, baby?' and that is not a line to start a hunt with, or to use in broad daylight in Bobby's yard with Sam in the audience. 'I kind of need you to talk to the goddess in question,' he says. 'Come on, we'll show you the lore.'

But Jo's eyes narrow, laughter suddenly disappearing like the sun behind a cloud. 'What aren't you telling me, Dean?' she asks, sounding awfully like her mom. 'You do mean talk, right? Just talk? Without any sacrificial altars involved?'

And Dean thinks, _oh crap, she's onto us_. 

Sam shakes his head violently. Jo looks at him, past Dean. 'No?' she says.

Sam keeps shaking. He's gonna make himself dizzy. 

'My organs get to stay inside my body?' The scary thing is this is pretty much the checklist Dean would be working through too, if he were in her shoes right now. She's a quick study for someone who wasn't raised in the life.

Sam nods like a performing horse. 

'I don't have to give up my firstborn child?' Okay, that one Dean wouldn't have thought of.

Sam sighs heavily through his nose in frustration, grabs Jo's duffle bag between his teeth and starts to pull her inside, and she's powerless to resist because she's got her arm tangled in the strap. Rookie mistake. Dean follows them and notices that Sam's got pretty good at getting in the front door without getting stuck. He drags Jo all the way to Bobby's desk. 

Bobby stands back, holding his mid-morning glass of the breakfast of champions out of the way of the stampede. 'What in Hell?' he asks Dean as Dean fetches up next to him. 

'Turns out Sammy's better at talking to girls when he's all cute and fuzzy,' Dean shrugs. 'And when he can't actually talk.'

'Yeah, well, he's getting his drool all over my books, you wanna get in there and be his opposable thumbs before I have to explain to my book repair guy that that grimoire's moosed as well as foxed?'

'You have a book repair guy?'

Bobby glares. 'Yeah, he's on speed dial next to the plumber. Get over there.'

'So, we're dealing with Artemis,' says Jo when Dean peers over her shoulder. 

'Yup.'

'She's got a pretty big portfolio,' Jo points out. 'Girls. Deer. Hunters. I'm guessing that since you guys already have the hunter angle covered and 'deer' is kind of the problem, the reason you called me is because I'm a girl, huh?' She keeps flipping through the book gently, turning page after page covered in woodcuts of semi-naked ladies with dogs and stags and weaponry. 

Dean nods. 'Got it in one. Bobby says this chick ain't too keen on guys in general, so we figured you might be … better qualified to talk her around.'

'Better _qualified_?' Jo looks at him for a long, long moment, mouth twitching, and then says, with those wide, innocent, damsel-in-distress eyes that always get overconfident monsters killed, 'So, were you planning on actually asking me about my virginity or were you just gonna try putting the moves on me again so you could check under the hood yourself?'

Bobby splutters from across the room, choking on his breakfast. Sam, who's been doing something hurriedly over on the other side of the desk that Dean hasn't managed to figure out, makes a choking noise of his own and coughs a ballpoint pen in a perfect ballistic parabola across the room. 

He then holds up a shakily-written sign on soggy paper that reads, 'ArE YoU A VIRgIn?' It dangles on a crazy angle from his mouth with his big brown eyes looking hopeful over the top. 

'Well, at least someone's prepared to be straightforward with me,' says Jo.

There's one beat, two, of awkward silence, and then Dean asks, 'Well, are you?' and can't help the involuntary protective hunching over around his genitalia.

'Good thing all your lines suck, huh?' Jo says, and winks.

***

They've been driving for three hours, with Sam wedged into the backseat again and bits of him spilling over, like his head hanging over into the space between Dean and Jo, and his bony knee poking into the small of Dean's back even through all the leather and padding of the seat, when Jo finally turns to Dean and says, 'This makes you really uncomfortable, doesn't it?'

Dean gives her a sidelong glance past Sam's dewlaps and shrugs. 'Kinda, yeah.'

'Why? I gotta say, I kinda had you pegged as a cherryhound, Dean,' she says, teasingly. 'You're the last guy I expected to get all prissy about asking me that question. Particularly when you actually have a legit, non-skeevy reason to want to know.'

'I'm not a - Jesus Christ,' Dean swears, eyes back on the road because if he gets mad and accidentally swerves it'll be just his luck right now that he'll put his baby in a ditch and then have to explain to some upstanding officer of the law why there's a pretty girl and a moose in his upside down classic car and this'll all end up on some stupid reality TV show. 'Bobby's the one who came up with your name as a contender, just for your information. It's Sammy I'm worried about.'

Jo snorts. 'Alright, calm down. I'm helping you, okay, so unbunch your panties a little.'

Dean would swear the noise Sam makes is 'Hah!'

'You can shut up too,' Dean informs him. 'Or I'm gonna sell you to Wild America as a performing animal.' He reaches forward and turns up the AC/DC as loud as it will go. Jo pokes her tongue out at him, but she starts mouthing the chorus to 'Shook Me All Night Long' while she's pretending to look out the window. 

Sam sighs so heavily Dean feels his hair ruffle in the breeze, and pillows his head on the back of the front seat and apparently, somehow, manages to go to sleep, so Dean has to drive the next hour with the tines of one of Sam's antlers practically in his ear, which is annoying. 

After Sam starts snoring hard enough to blow spitbubbles in her direction, Jo starts pawing through Dean's tape collection and finds the one Christmas present Sam ever managed to find for Dean that he couldn't drink or pour into his baby - "A Very Metal Christmas and a Headbanging New Year". 

Turns out Sam likes being called Rudolph even less than he likes being called Bambi, particularly when it's being bellowed into his ear. Dean's gonna have to get the felt on the Impala's roof stitched up. 

***

They slide on into the closest little town to where Sam got zapped at about ten o clock the next evening. Dean doesn't like how quiet it is, or the number of homemade 'missing' posters on the power poles. Obviously they can't stay in town, not with Sam in tow (even though he's managed to wedge himself low enough to avoid being seen that they're probably going to have to crowbar him out), so they just keep driving through, but there's a group of people spilling out of a purple storefront that has a gold pentagram painted on the sign that particularly catches Dean's eyes. They look pissed. And worried. A couple of them are clearly crying and being comforted by others. 

'Check out the town meeting,' he says to Jo, pointing as they cruise by. 

She glances. 'Was it like this last time?'

'I don't think so,' says Dean. 'We had a bunch of omens, sure, but they were tied up with the demon we were chasing - pretty sure it woulda just looked like bad weather to the citizens. And we ganked that son of a bitch. This town should be back to normal by now.'

'Yeah, well, doesn't look like it,' says Jo. 'You think maybe there's a case here? Another case, I mean?'

Dean's instinct is to park up, find a motel, change into his Fed suit and get on the prowl for some intel. But when he looks in his rearview mirror, trying to keep watching the slowly-breaking up crowd of people, all he can see are his brother's enormous shoulders in the way. 'We got other stuff to deal with right now,' he says. 'When we get Sammy sorted, then we'll come back for whatever this is.'

***

'I hate camping,' says Dean, trying to bend a fibreglass pole enough to hook it into the stupid metal thing so that the tent Jo brought will stand up properly.

'Color me surprised,' says Jo drily from the other side of the unholy, wobbling, nylon thing they're putting together. 'You seem so outdoorsy.'

'Yeah well. Forgive me for preferring accommodation that can't be torn open by the pinky claw of any monster that fancies it.' Dean manages to get the pole seated and the dome tent rises up like the worst phoenix metaphor ever. 'We are gonna be sitting ducks in this thing.'

Jo tosses him the bag of pegs and picks up her mallet in a threatening manner. 'It's this or sleeping bags under the stars, which'll be real fun if it rains,' she says. 'Think of it this way, Dean. If the oogey boogey monster comes, you can shoot it through the tent without having to worry about ricochet.'

Sam drags the flysheet over, managing to do so without actually treading on it, and dumps it at Dean's feet. Dean doesn't like it when it's two against one.

But he has to grudgingly admit Jo has a point about the ricochet thing.

And when the tent's finally up, and nailed down, and filled with bed stuff, Dean's pretty much tired enough to just fall down on the blanket he hauled out of the backseat of the Impala, face first. So he does. There's some rustling noises that tell him to keep his eyes safely buried until a zipper's pulled and Jo says, 'Okay, are we good?'

Dean peeks and sees she's rolled up in a sleeping bag. He shimmies under the blanket properly and drags his jeans off, because going to sleep lying on your keys and a pocket-knife and a flask of holy water isn't comfortable. He pulls the knife out, balls the jeans up to use as a pillow, and settles in for the night. He wrinkles his nose at first - his jeans are rank, probably time to hit a laundrette when they're done with this gig - but the blanket smells weirdly familiar, like the car and Sam and warm late nights when he's too bushed to drive any more and Sam switches places with him, and that's enough to start easing him into sleep.

'Yeah, we're good,' he mumbles. 'G'night, Jo.'

'Night.'

Then there's some more rustling and the tent starts shaking, and Dean comes instantly awake again at full battle-stations - until he realises it's Sam backing into the tent like a Hummer into a suburban garage. 

'The fuck, dude?' Dean manages, shoving the knife he'd grabbed on instinct back under his ratty denim 'pillow' and glaring at his brother's backside which is like a heap of bricks taking up most of the centre of the tent, between Dean and Jo. If this is Sam's idea of being a chaperone a) he's not subtle and b) dude. Uncool. Where is the trust? As if Dean would do something to jeopardise this mission.

'I said he could,' says Jo, yawning. 'He'll fit if he leaves his head outside. Go to sleep, Dean, we've got some heavy-duty religion to do in the morning.'

'Yeah, yeah,' says Dean, rolling back over. 

Sam still snores, mostly drowning out Jo doing the same. That isn't what makes Dean keep waking up in the night, though - it's that he could swear he hears hounds on his trail. It's not like he hasn't had nightmares about that before, let's face it. 

He keeps his hand on the knife, even if it is only a dream. 

***

'Okay,' says Jo after they've spent three hours trudging through woods that look like every other stupid freaking woods they've ever trudged through before, on the word of a moose who only got turned into a moose because he _got distracted_ , 'Tell me all these footprints aren't unsettling anyone else.' She stops dead and puts the hand that isn't cradling her shotgun on her hip. 

'You're not the only one,' says Dean, pulling up and scratching his head. 'Whoever came through here, they were running for their goddamn lives, too.' He crouches and pokes at the nearest set of sneaker prints, feeling how hard the mud's crusted. He pulls at the broken plants alongside the path. 'Maybe last night?' he says. 'Maybe the day before? These aren't that fresh.'

Sam has stopped a couple feet further on, and he's looking back over his shoulder at Dean and Jo. 'Maybe if you'd'a run you wouldn't've got moosed,' Dean offers. 

Sam snorts, and then suddenly freezes. His hooves dig into the mud, Dean notices, because his legs splay a fraction, like he's bracing himself to run. 'What's up, Lassie?' Dean asks him. 'Little Timmy fallen down the well again?' Wrong animal references, yeah yeah, but there aren't that many moose jokes and Sam's version of 'reindeer games' is probably gonna end with someone getting disembowelled. 'Sam?' Dean says when Sam doesn't rise to the bait. 'Sammy?'

Sam still doesn't react. His ears are actually pricked forward. 

And then Dean hears it too, and before his brain catches up with his reflexes he's grabbed Jo around her middle and basically catapulted them both into a tangle of bracken. She struggles in his hold and is totally about to knee him in the jewels and make a break for it when Sam's head appears, chewing on bracken and clearly trying to telegraph 'Be cool, guys, be cool' with his eyes, and someone unknown (who sounds kinda stoned) says 'Whoa, moose! Shit. Um. We should probably find another way round here.'

Sam eventually moves off and Jo clearly takes that as an excuse to get to her feet and punch Dean in the arm. 'You couldn't have just told me to hide?' she asks.

Dean rubs where she hit him. Her fists are little but they're hard and she didn't exactly pull the punch. 'I'm used to idiot civilians,' he explains, managing to get out of the shrubbery without falling over. Bracken is clingy. 'Sorry.'

'I wonder what they were doing up here, anyway,' Jo says, jerking her head in the direction of the voices.

'Somehow I doubt they're the local hikers' group,' Dean says, brushing his leaves off his jacket. 

'Maybe they're out here looking for whoever came stampeding through here the other night,' says Jo. 'We've had 'Missing' posters and town meetings - you think we're up to search parties?' She hitches her bag back up over her shoulder. 

'Looks like it,' Dean agrees. 'Awesome. So now we have to avoid the townsfolk while searching for the monster.' It's not an idea he likes, because what always ends up happening is the _townsfolk_ find the monster and Dean and Sam either have to play search and rescue, or they find a bunch of townsfolk-corpses, nice and bloody.

'You think Artemis is what's causing their troubles too?' Jo asks. 'I didn't think she went in for civilian abduction.'

'Maybe she's branching out.' Dean shrugs. 'I dunno. And I don't care. Gods are above my pay-grade. I just want a brother who can carry his own shotgun and shovel his own shit again.'

'Yeah,' says Jo, 'Well, if people are getting killed round here, I wanna stop it.'

'Amen to that, sister,' Dean says. 'Come on, we still got daylight.' Not much, but enough to keep looking around for a little while longer. Dean wants to get this over with.

But when he turns back towards the trail they were following, Sam has frozen in his tracks again. Dean thinks for a split second he's gonna have to dive for the bushes a second time but then he realises Sam's not listening, he's looking - he's freaking pointing like a lurcher, nose stretched out, practically touching a tree that Dean would have just walked past. 

Claw marks in the tree. Long, scalpel-sharp claw marks. Dean wouldn't even have seen them, they're above his eye-height and he's been tracking, basically been nose to the ground all day, and Jo's been keeping her eyes on the shrubbery, watching his back. But Sam's damn well been on point this whole time, Dean realises. Same as always.

They're deep scores in the bark, showing clean gold slashes of sappy wood up from under the hairy, mossy green outside of the tree. Not many things do that, and Dean has an awfully certain feeling he knows what this is. 

And the forest is full of goddamn goddess-worshipping hippie civilians.

And he has to sleep in a freaking tent tonight.

And he's gonna have to fix this and Sam has no opposable thumbs so it's gonna have to be Jo that tag-teams him on this one and goddamn, if Dean gets Jo killed Ellen's _shotgun_ is gonna be the least of his worries.

Jo lets out a low, worried whistle. 'Wendigo?' she says. Someone's clearly been studying up, despite her mom laying down the law.

'Unfortunately, yes,' says someone from behind them. 'Now, will you do something about it?'

Dean spins on his heel, going for his gun.

'You're not going to need that,' says (presumably) Artemis, like he's an idiot. She rolls her eyes.

Dean takes stock. Okay, less naked than he was kinda hoping and kinda dreading - she looks mid-twenties, brown hair, taller than Jo but shorter than him, packing a crossbow that looks like serious business (he's jealous), but pretty much … generic hunter chick. Dean isn't sure what he was expecting but this is not what the saucy marble statues were hinting at. She's wearing _plaid_.

'You're Artemis?' Jo asks, voice too high, standing her ground at Dean's shoulder. _Steady,_ Dean thinks at her as if she's psychic and can hear him. 

'In all my glory,' says Artemis sarcastically. 

Dean doesn't like her tone and he really doesn't like that she's got a bolt loaded and her bowstock hard against her shoulder when Jo doesn't even have a round chambered and his gun's still in his waistband. So he edges himself just a bit further forward. Sam's clearly having the same kinda thought. They end up book-ending Jo, and hopefully between them they can at least shove her down if arrows start flying. 'So, Artemis, you wanna turn my brother here back to human, or what?' Dean asks, trying for friendly. 'And then we can -' 

'Hush, you,' says Artemis. 'You,' she says, beckoning at Jo. 'You're one of mine.'

Jo shrugs. 'I'm a hunter, if that's what you mean,' she says. 'Don't recall ever praying to you, though.'

Artemis scowls. 'Well, worshippers aren't what they used to be. You're close enough. You'll have to do - I have a job for you.' 

'Gee, thanks,' Jo says. 'You not got any true believers you can be ordering around instead?'

'None that know one end of a flamethrower from the other,' Artemis snaps. 'Let's just say the hunting aspect of my duties has been … less celebrated these last few decades. I'm working on it.' She gives Dean a really nasty glare here, for some reason.

'So that gives you the right to go around press-ganging any hunter that walks onto your patch?' Jo asks. She shakes a lock of hair out of her face and glares at Artemis defiantly. 

It's the wrong tone to take. 'Y'know, there was a time when I used to turn little girls like you into bears if they crossed me?' Artemis demands. 'And as for you,' she says, pointing at Dean before he can get a word in. 'And your brother. Be glad you're still human and he's still breathing. You know what happened to the last man I turned into a deer?'

'You set your dogs on him,' Dean growls, shoving even further past both Jo and Sam as if he could shield them both. He can't help it. 'You try that with Sam, I guarantee you you'll be short some dogs by the end of it,' he snarls at her, stomping forward.

'Are you done?' Artemis asks sarcastically, stalking up to meet him halfway. She jabs the point of the quarrel in her crossbow into the flat of his chest. 'Good. Now _be quiet_.' 

Dean could smack the bow down fast enough to catch her unawares, maybe, and he'd be able to grab her before she could shoot him, maybe, but if he tries it he'll only put Sammy or Jo in her sights instead. So he grits his teeth and plays dumb, instead. 

'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' he says, putting his hands up gently, trying to buy some time. He probably didn't even need to bother making the effort - Artemis is already looking past him again at Jo. 

'Look. I need your help,' she says, kinda bitterly. 'Unfortunately.'

'Well, you should get better at asking nicely,' Jo says, sassy and nervous. 'How does this even qualify as a plan, anyway?' She waves her non-shotgun-carrying hand at Sam. 'Couldn't you just have asked the boys? They were here already.'

'The 'boys' turned up, and left again, before the wendigo woke,' Artemis says. Dean gets the distinct feeling that she's not used to having to actually explain herself. There's the same set to her jaw that he knows he gets some days when Sam's being prissy and just won't do as he's fucking told. 'Frankly the whole thing is a set of coincidental nuisances, and now I've lost three followers in three days. You're a hunter, girl, won't you just do your job? I'll even turn your ridiculous boytoy back, if he's that precious to you.'

'You're a hunter too,' Jo points out. 'Why can't you deal with it yourself?'

No no no, that's not the way they want this to go - they need Artemis to have a reason to turn Sammy back. Dean tries to catch Jo's eye but he can't really move beyond waggling his eyebrows unless he wants to end up as a really short shish-kebob. And he doesn't like the way Jo's fingers are twitching near her trigger-guard.

'Politics,' Artemis says, and shrugs, which makes the point of the quarrel drag against Dean's chest. She doesn't seem to notice, or she doesn't care. Dean would put his money on the second one. 'I don't mess with the locals and they don't run me out of their forests.' She sighs, although it's more of a growl, really. 'But apparently that doesn't extend to my followers.' 

Jo finally looks at Dean, raising an eyebrow. Dean shrugs and nods. 'I think we can do business,' says Jo. 'Turn Sam back, and we'll get right on it.'

'Get rid of my wendigo problem,' counters Artemis, 'and I'll turn him into whatever you want.'

'Hey, lady -' Dean tries, but Artemis gets right into his face. Her quarrel is now actually digging into his skin, even through all his shirts. He can't tell if it's bleeding or not, but it hurts, like a ragged papercut does because half of it's bruising. He winces.

'Don't 'hey lady' me,' she rasps. 'You should be grateful I even let you speak to me, Dean Winchester. Oh, no, don't look surprised. Even if the Judeo-Christian mob weren't sniffing around you like mutts, I'd know you. I know your type. You blow through towns and use your white-knight complex to seduce women, and then you leave them in your dust. Rescued.' She says the word like it's filthy and has four letters. Her eyes are dark, storm-blue, this close up, and she's _fierce_ , and even though she's wearing something that looks like Sam's cast-offs Dean is starting to see what all those Greek dudes were seeing when they carved the statues. 'Did it ever occur to you to hand them guns of their own?' she asks. 

Dean stares at her. She's easing her finger against the trigger of her bow. Dean doesn't know what a crossbow bolt does when you fire it straight into a person point-blank. He doesn't really want to find out. 

Sam, out in Dean's peripheral vision, is twitching and stomping and putting his head down and if he charges Artemis Dean isn't sure how that's going to work out either _vis a vis_ him remaining non-punctured. 

Right now would be a great time for a brilliant plan, but Dean's got squat.

'Hey, _lady_ ,' says Jo, finally chambering a round and hoisting her shotgun to her shoulder. 'Put the weapon down. Sun's setting,' she points out, and she's doing a damn good imitation of calm despite the way Dean can see the slivers of the whites of her eyes all the way round. 'You want us to kill the wendigo? Then you gotta let us go before it comes out to play. And ventilating Dean means the deal's off.'

Jo's freaked - Dean can read her like a book. But it works. Artemis can clearly see she's got a point. She lowers the crossbow, and Jo, slower, lowers her shotgun. 'Good,' Jo says. 'Awesome. Are we good?'

'I want your word,' says Artemis, turning her back on Dean to face Jo square on. The last time something supernatural treated Dean as this little of a threat, he was seven. 'Kill the wendigo - save any of my girls it's been holding. And then you can have your little friend back.'

'Square deal,' says Jo. 'Nice doing business with you.'

Artemis holds Jo's stare for just a moment longer, then nods sharply. And then she's gone - gone like demons go sometimes, just poof, not there any more. Dean blinks, looks around out of habit, but they're in an empty clearing. And yeah, the sun really is starting to get low in the sky. They need to get back to their tent while they have enough light to get the protective symbols drawn, or this is gonna be a lot more eventful a night than Dean really wants.

Jo's pretty much deflated. 'Whooo,' she says, like her adrenaline has all drained away into a hole in the ground. 'Okay. So that's a god, huh? Intense.'

'Welcome to World Religion 101,' says Dean, taking the shotgun off her before she can drop it. 'But normally we just stab the bastards - I don't like all this negotiation shit.'

Jo rolls her eyes. 'Jeez, Dean, lighten up a little. All we gotta do now is torch the wendigo and Sam's back to his regularly scheduled pouting and looming.'

Dean sighs. Sam pretends he didn't hear Jo (he makes a specific face when he thinks he's being subtle). 'Yeah, it's just a regular family camping trip,' Dean mutters. 'Complete with barbeque, extra crispy.'

Jo grins.

***

The light starts going pink when they're still a way out from their campsite. Dean does a mental stocktake and realises that at best they've got two lighters, if Jo carries one, and no accelerant, and making torches out of sticks is way harder than Indiana Jones always made it look. Fuck. 

Sam, who's been on point again, takes this moment to flop down in front of Jo and block the path.

'What's up, Sam?' Jo asks. She can't get past him unless she wants to get off the beaten track, and that's a bad idea. Dean comes up behind her and peers over her shoulder at Sam. 

'He wants you to go for a ride,' Dean explains. 'And I'm pretty sure that's not meant to be a line, either.'

Jo gives him a pissy bitchface worthy of Sammy himself, but she does get on. Sam doesn't get up. He just looks up at Dean (and even sitting on the ground, he doesn't have to look that far up, jeez, why couldn't Artemis have turned him into a fallow deer or something? A man could get a complex) and cocks his head.

'I think he wants you to go for a ride too, Dean,' Jo says sweetly. 'Come on, sun's going down.'

'I can walk,' says Dean, remembering the hell-for-leather charge to the Impala and how long it took his spine to readjust from all the jolting. 

'Not fast enough,' Jo points out. 'Come on, Dean, suck it up. How bad can it be?'

She has no idea. But Dean doesn't have much choice. He scowls, but he climbs up behind her anyway.

***

'Thi-i-i--s iiiis ree-ee-eeea--ll-yy bu-u-uuu--mpyyy,' Jo yells in Dean's ear. 

'No-o-o shi-ii-i-t!'

***

Dean doesn't know exactly what a saddle-sore is but he's pretty sure he's developing one. But Sam did get them back to the tent with enough thin, grey-pink daylight left to see by while they start scratching out protective symbols, so Dean scruffs his hand through the hair between Sam's antlers and says, 'Good job, Sammy.'

He pulls out Dad's journal. 'Okay, everyone get a stick.' This is gonna be the most time-efficient and least Bobby-approved warding ever. But Dean itches just thinking about how they went to sleep last night unguarded and unwarded. He doesn't care how ugly the symbols are or how many moose hoofprints are scattered around - no goddamn wendigo is getting in here tonight.

By the time they're done Sam has mud spattered all over his flanks, the sun's set, and Jo clearly needs to get some sleep, or at least to stop peering into the trees when she thinks Dean can't see her doing it. 

'Alright, time to turn in,' he says, still trying to fight his inner soccer mom. Jo rolls her eyes, but she shuffles into the tent. Dean decides to give her five minutes to get herself sorted. 

'So, looks like we're nearly home and hosed,' he says to Sam, punching him lightly in whatever passes for a shoulder on a moose. Sam snorts at him. 

'Okay, okay, touch wood,' he adds, knocking on his own skull. 'But seriously. I know wendigos are tough mothers but we've dealt with them before. You'll have your thumbs back in no time.'

Sam sighs heavily. 

'Well, aren't you just a bundle of joy tonight,' Dean says. 'Excuse me for trying to lighten your load there, Sammy.'

Sam shoulder-nudges him towards the tent instead of trying to respond. Dean goes. He knows when he's out-weighed. Jo's bundled up like a caterpillar in her sleeping bag, so he wriggles under his blanket and shoves off his jeans again to turn them into a pillow. Knife in hand, he tries to settle in for some shut-eye.

'Sam's pretty worried, huh?' says Jo quietly. Outside they can hear snuffling and stamping. Sam's walking the goddamned perimeter, Dean realises. 

'Yeah,' he admits, sighing. 'We worked a wendigo job a couple of years ago, just after Sam got back into the game, and I got myself snatched. But he got me out and we torched the sucker, so y'know, it ended happy.'

'Guess he thinks he's working with a few handicaps this time,' Jo says, a little too thoughtfully. 

Dean swears internally. 'We'll get it done,' he says. 'Maybe he's not in fighting form, but that's why we got you, right?'

'That's what I mean -' Jo starts, but she's interrupted by a hell of a violent, startled snort from Sam outside, and the sound of _goddamn civilians_ tromping through like a herd of elephants. Shit. Don't they have homes to go to? It's dark out there and people have been disappearing. Artemis may be the goddess of deer but all her followers seem to be fucking lemmings.

The voices don't die away, no matter how much Dean wants them to.

'- I'm not exactly -' Jo starts, but Dean interrupts.

'Don't chicken out on me now,' he says, trying to get his jeans on the right way round in a hurry, under a blanket, without flashing Jo. He manages to drag them on by doing an impersonation of an inchworm. 'You're what we got, Joanna Beth Harvelle, so sack up. And c'mon, there's people out there.'

He crawls back out of the tent and pretends he doesn't hear Jo muttering about getting middle-named and what is he, her _mother?_ underneath the rustle of her sleeping-bag.

'Sammy?' he whispers. 'Sam? That what I think it is?' It's freaking dark out here. 

Sam looms out of the blackness like the Titanic. He moves as quietly as a ghost. The lights blundering around out beyond the reach of their ten-foot circle of protective symbols shows that there's three noisy, suicidal intruders. 

'What the hell are they still doing out here?' Jo whispers, coming up behind Dean and Sam. 'They're sitting ducks if that wendigo comes along.'

Dean rolls his eyes and hopes it's too dark for her to see him. She and Sam both have this problem with stating the goddamn obvious, turns out. 

'Hey,' Dean says, half-yelling and half-hissing at the wandering idiots. 'Yeah, you out there! Get over here!'

'Who's that?' one of them says.

'I dunno,' says another. 

'Goddammit,' says Dean under his breath. 'Stay where you are,' he yells, properly this time. Their flashlights do stop bobbing around, and before he can remind himself what a stupid idea this is, or how much faster than him a wendigo can move, he bolts out towards them. 

'Whoa, hey,' says the girl who belongs to the first voice they heard, when Dean grabs her by the shoulder. 'I have Mace!'

'If you were gonna use it you'd have done it by now,' Dean growls. 'All three of you, come with me. You're gonna get yourselves killed out here like this.' He shoves until they're basically being herded in front of him, and snatches a flashlight off one of them as they move. It's barely twenty feet to the circle of protection, but something in the trees is moving and Dean can't tell if the noise is those phantom hounds he keeps thinking he's hearing, or wendigo, or just a goddamn bear. 

The second they get to the tent Jo scuttles out to fix the symbols they scuffed getting in here, which leaves Dean, three hippie chicks, and all half a ton of Sam. 

'There's a freaking moose in here!' says Girl 1, getting herself labelled 'the annoyingly talky one.'

'No shit, Sherlock,' Dean says, resisting the urge to clap a hand over her mouth. 'Keep your voice down.'

'But it's a moose!' 

She sounds like she's on the edge of panic, and Dean doesn't have time or the patience to deal with that kind of shit. 'He's my goddamn brother, now will you button your lip before it finds us?'

'Before what finds us?' pipes up Girl 2. 

Jo comes up, dusting her hands off. 'The thing that's been taking your friends,' she says.

'Your brother?' asks Girl 3, clearly slow on the uptake.

Dean rolls his eyes. 'Okay, news flash. The goddess you worship is real, she turned my brother into a moose, and there's a wendigo charging round these woods chowing down on your buddies.'

'If it's so dangerous, why the hell are you even here?' Girl 1 demands, apparently more interested in that than, oh, say, the goddess or the wendigo. What the fuck do they put in the weed in North Dakota?

'It's my job,' says Dean. That rustling in the trees is still there. He puts his hand on his gun even though he knows it isn't going to do diddly squat if a wendigo attacks.

'Our job,' adds Jo, which makes Dean proud but also makes him worried about what Ellen's going to say later.

'And who _are_ you? Lumberjack Batman?' Girl 2 says grumpily at Dean. Jo snorts, even though that must make her, like, Redneck Batgirl or something.

But Dean ignores the lame snark and does the standard "whoops, now I have to tell you the truth" intro grudgingly. The only difference to a normal hunt is that Sam can't exactly introduce himself right now. So. 'I'm Dean,' Dean says, 'This is Jo, and that's my brother Sam.'

'The moose.'

'Jeez, you're like a stuck record,' says Jo. Sam is sulking already.

The wendigo - has to be the wendigo, nothing else moves that fast - takes that moment to zoom through the shaky overlapping circles of weak light that the girls' flashlights are making in the scrub, and that pretty much kills everyone's stupid chatter.

For about three seconds. 

'That wasn't a bear,' says Girl 1 shakily. 

'I told you,' Dean sighs. ' _Wendigo_. Look, what are your names?' _I gotta know what to yell when you do something dumb_ , he doesn't add.

'Xanthe,' says Girl 1. 'And this is Leda and Andromache.'

At least Girl 3, Andromache, has the good grace to look sheepish. Man. Artemis really wasn't joking about the bargain-basement followers. 

'And what do your moms call you?' Jo asks pointedly. 'Didn't Leda do it with a _swan_?' she asks Girl 2 ("Leda") without waiting for an answer to her first question. 

They all shuffle but put their chins up defensively. Hell. Dean should be the last person bitching about what people wanna call themselves, given he still signs his name _D. Hasselhof_. 'Doesn't matter,' he says gruffly. 'Look. We're stuck here 'til daybreak. Wendigo are strong and freaking fast and they have pretty much perfect night-sight. You're safe in here with us. Come morning, I'll get Jo to take you back down to the town and we'll gank this motherfucker and be on our way. Okay?'

Xanthe shivers. She's not exactly dressed for a night out in the woods. 'Are we just gonna sit here?' she asks a bit plaintively. 'All night?'

Dean does a mental headcount and realises that with the best will in the world they're not all gonna fit in the tent unless they sit on top of each other. And okay, he's been to a few 'camping trips' like that but … no. Just no. 

But if they do sit out in the cold all night, he's gonna have three cases of exposure and his own protesting back to deal with all tomorrow. He sighs. 'Fine. I'm gonna go get some firewood.'

This is, conservatively speaking, the stupidest thing he's done all night, but he's got Andromache's flashlight, a Zippo, and a gung-ho lack of regard for his own safety. And when he steps out of the circle of protective symbols he realises he also has a moose. Presumably for backup, or whatever. 

'Sammy, if this thing decides it wants venison you are a sitting target,' he whispers, and Sam nudges him in the shoulder. 'Okay, sure, but maybe this will be the day a wendigo finally decides it wants something other than delicious people,' Dean tries again. 'You'll be safer back - okay, fine -' Sam is pushing him now. 'I'll just stack the wood between your antlers then, you big … moose,' Dean finishes kinda lamely.

It's really dark, and Dean has good night-sight, but it is actually pretty reassuring having Sam there with him when something huge - why is he saying 'something'? It's the fucking wendigo - flickers through the flashlight's beam again. Dean has an armful of sticks by this point and he knows for a fact that what he's got won't burn for more than about half an hour but fuck it, he can come out and get another half an hour's worth then, and just keep doing it til dawn if he has to, so he elbows Sam in the flank or whatever, and they about turn and start making their way back to the tent.

He can hear Jo telling one of the girls to sit down and shut up, exasperatedly, and whichever girl it was hisses back, 'I am _not_ staying out in the woods overnight with you and Save A Moose, Ride A Cowboy -'

\- and everything goes dark.

***

Dean wakes up, groggy, in the dark, and manages to say 'Son of a _bitch_ -' because apparently that's his reaction to basically everything, before he passes out again

***

He wakes up again to the sound of a girl crying. It's a tired, quiet kind of a cry like it's been going for a while and she'd really like to stop but she doesn't know how any more. 'Hey,' he hisses, trying to ignore the pounding headache. He twists, too - tied up at the wrists and strung up from above. 'Hey, lady, whoever you are. Hey,' 

There's a tiny snuffling noise and then a little voice says, 'H-hello?'

'Hey,' says Dean as gently as he can. 'I'm Dean. I'm stuck down here too. You okay?'

The next thing he hears is a bitter little laugh. 'Aside from being tied up in some freak's backwoods cabin, I'm super,' says his fellow captive. 'Jesus. Why are we _here_?'

'We're the larder,' Dean says, squinting up into the shadows and tugging experimentally at his wrists. 'Is there anyone else in here?' He yanks again, a bit harder, and some dust falls down. 

'I'm not - I don't know,' says the girl, and she might be getting angry or she might be about to cry again, Dean can't tell. 'Whoever it was hit me, man, I didn't see a goddamn thing.'

Okay, that sounds like angry _and_ crying. 'Hey, hey, it's okay, we're gonna get out of here,' Dean says, yanking again at the ropes. 'What's your name, sweetheart?'

'Laura,' says the girl, sniffing. 'And could you be less patronising, please?'

Dean roll his eyes, for all the fucking good that does as a communication method in the dark, and the ball of his left thumb starts to get purchase under the loops of rope. He's gonna get serious rope burn doing this, but he might just be able to slip one hand free. 'Sorry, Laura, just kinda running on autopilot here.' He keeps wriggling. Ah, yep, good. It's coming loose.

Fuckfuck _fuck_ rope burn hurts like a bitch. His left hand feels like he ran it through a bacon slicer but at least it's free. He fishes in his pocket for his knife to get the other hand out without having to maim it. 

'That makes two of us,' says Laura. She makes a grumpy noise, and then adds, 'Look, okay, I'm sure you're not trying to be an ass. I'm just kind of not having a good day here.'

'You and me both, sister,' says Dean, hacking at the rope. The knife's sharp but he's not got a good angle, and his left hand just isn't as dextrous as his right, particularly when shredded. 'But hey, good news,' he adds, finally getting free and wincing as all his weight lands on his over-extended legs. 'It's gonna get better. We're getting out of here.'

He swivels, trying to find her in the gloom. She's clearly doing the same, because movement catches his eye over the other end of this … room? Cave? Space, whatever.

'What? How?' 

She doesn't exactly squeak when Dean catches her around the waist and reaches up to cut her ropes, but she does kick him in the shins pretty good for a half-starved weirdo-worshipping hippie.

'Hey, I'm just trying to help you,' Dean wheezes, half-falling over. 

'Oh my god,' she says in a rush. 'Jesus. Sorry,' and pulls him back up to his feet. 'Warn a girl before you manhandle her after she's had a traumatic kidnapping experience, jeez.'

'Noted,' Dean says, coughing and straightening up. 'Now, before we haul ass out of the creepy monster lair, who else is down here?'

'I don't know,' she says. 'I guess … before me there were two others who came up here and never came down?'

'Why the Hell did you people keep coming up here?' Dean asks, scratching the back of his head with his knife handle. 'I mean, what was going through your heads? People were getting disappeared and you just kept marching right on in?'

Laura shifts from foot to foot, looking awkward. Then she mutters something about a 'sacred grove' and shoots him a glare so powerful it could probably be used as a surface-to-air missile. He realises she didn't give him an unconvincing Greek fake name, which possibly means Artemis has at least one follower with a brain?

'I'm sorry, what?' Dean says, looking around him and squinting. Shit, some of these lumps are clearly like, old broken furniture or something, but some of them might be people. Three disappeared Wiccans doesn't necessarily mean only three disappeared people in total. How long has this wendigo been up to tricks?

'Our sacred grove is up here,' Laura says, peering at one of the mysterious lumps and then, gingerly, poking it with her foot. It makes a grinding noise like falling rocks and some dust comes up, so, probably not human? 'You wouldn't understand.'

'You're a Wiccan follower of Artemis, right?' Dean says, pushing over something that turns out to be an old roll of carpet. 'I'm guessing that's what you're being all defensive about? Don't be. I'm here hunting a wendigo, so, we're square on the weird-reasons-to-be-in-a-forest-at-night stakes.'

Pushing further back into what is increasingly starting to feel like a half-fallen-down hunting cabin, Dean finds someone still strung up and pretty out of it. He starts sawing at their ropes. By Braille, not that he's trying to feel them up or anything, this is another girl. Too skinny, and so woozy that Dean's suspicious of how long she's been here. By the time he manages to get her down and lower her to a sitting position, she still hasn't quite made it to awake, although she twitches and flinches if he pokes her in the shoulder, so, that's a positive sign. 'Hey, Laura,' Dean says, before moving on to the next hanging shape. 'You got anyone alive over there?'

'No,' says Laura in a thin, high voice that tells Dean he probably shouldn't ask questions about what she _has_ found. 

'Okay, you wanna come over here and look after this one, then?' He stays still while she picks her way over. She looks kind of unsteady on her feet, probably from being strung up so long. 'Here,' he says, and resists the urge to physically push her down to sit with Miss Unconscious. 'I don't think she's doing so good. You wanna see if you can get her awake enough to get out of here on her own legs?' 

He's not _hopeful_ , but it's worth a try. He doesn't want to leave anyone in here and he can realistically only carry one of them at a time. 

'I'll try,' Laura says, folding into a sitting position. 'Oh my God, it's Veronica,' she adds. 

'One of your fellow lemmings?' Dean asks, reaching the next person swinging by their wrists. He squints and then reaches out a hand and touches wet, mouldy planks. They're at a wall. His knife blade slips and then catches and starts to cut the harsh ropes holding this girl up, and he tries to work out how big this room is, if there can be any more live ones in here. 'Ran into some of your friends before I got snatched,' he says, grunting as the weight of the girl lands on his shoulder. 'Xanthe, Andromache, and … something about screwing a swan?'

'Leda,' Laura sighs. 'Yeah, well. I guess some of us took the whole thing a bit more seriously than others.'

Dean half-carries, half-drags the next girl over to Laura. 'Recognise this one?' he asks. 'Is it taking your religion more seriously if you change your name to Leda or if you don't?' he adds, scratching the back of his head with the hilt of the knife and wondering what time of day it is. Do they make a break for it now? Or is it still night? Where does the wendigo hole up during the day? Here, or somewhere out there? 

Laura has Veronica's head in her lap and lets Dean settle the new girl by her side. 'This is … shit, what's she calling herself? Um. Thetis? Thetis.'

'Let me guess,' Dean says. 'Her mom calls her Sally?'

'Something like that,' Laura replies. 'Look, don't make fun. I guess we all took it seriously in our own ways.'

Dean's found another suspicious lump in the far corner, but his eyes are finally starting to adjust (whatever the wendigo does to you, it whammies your vision pretty good. Which is probably kind of a useful thing for a monster that likes to stash you in the dark and keep you as a live pantry) and he's pretty sure it's the last one. 'You say it like you don't take it seriously any more,' he says, testing the edge of the knife blade on the ball of his thumb and cursing the gritty ropes. The fucking thing's getting dull already. 

'Well, you'd think if there really was a warrior goddess of women and she was watching over me, I wouldn't be in this mess, right?'

Dean saws grimly at the last set of ropes. 'Politics,' he grunts. 'Gods, am I right? Bunch of useless dickbags, the lot of them.'

'Excuse me?'

'Your goddess is real,' Dean says. 'She's just kind of hamstrung because she's in a turf war with the local wendigo, the thing that stashed you here. So she sent me instead.' Okay, that was possibly not the best way to break all this news, but Dean's out of other options. And he was never that great at explanations anyway.

There's a hell of a silence from Laura's corner, over which Dean can hear some coming-to noises from either Veronica or Thetis. Hopefully both. 

He yanks on the partially-cut rope, hoping to break it like that because he's getting fucking blisters on his knife-hand. When he gets out of here he's gonna ice his hands for a _week_. It does eventually snap, but he barely manages to catch the falling girl. She's the worst of the lot - he can barely find a pulse.

When he gets her over to the other three it's plain that despite the noises, neither of Laura's charges has woken up properly, not enough to run. Laura still hasn't said anything more. Dean realises he's going to have to make at least two trips, and sighs. 'Come on, let's go,' he says, nudging Laura with his foot. 'Can you carry one of them?'

'Don't take this the wrong way,' says Laura, pushing up to her feet, and sort of hauling Veronica into something that looks more like a wrestling hold than a carry. 'But you're a madman.'

'Hey, wasn't me that was praying to her,' Dean says, shrugging. 'I just got tapped to be the cleanup squad. I'm just a goddamn hunter, sister.' He juggles his unnamed bundle into a better fireman's carry and starts to head towards where he's pretty sure the exit is, making a mental note of where they're standing so that he can come back for the other girl, Thetis or whatever, but then there's a scuffling noise.

'Was that you?' Dean whispers, hoping Laura just kicked a rock or something. 

'Nope,' Laura hisses.

'Fuck. You got a lighter?' Dean asks, fumbling for his own and trying not to drop his passenger. 'Or a scarf or something I can use to make a torch?'

Laura squeaks. 'Are you crazy? Don't make a torch! It'll see us!'

'It can see us anyway! It can _see in the dark!_ ' Dean hisses at her. 'But it hates fire! Trust me!'

'Why should I trust you? You think you hunt monsters and that Artemis is real! She's not real! I just joined up because the weed was good! And there was a bake sale!'

Dean can see the long, spindly shadow of the wendigo coming closer. Shit. He manages to sling his passenger more over his shoulder so that he can get one hand free enough to get at the lighter in his pocket, but even then he's got nothing to burn, and a Zippo flame isn't exactly terrifying even to something as flammable as a wendigo.

'Get over there,' he hisses at Laura, trying to shove her back into the far corner, backing up himself so that he can drop his Jane Doe with her. He accidentally trips over Thetis on the way as well, so he drags her as best as he can too. 'Stay down,' he growls. 'If this goes wrong, wait until it goes away again and then get the fuck out of here, get back down to town as fast as you can, and bring a goddamn _mob_ back with you. Okay? I'm talking pitchforks and especially the flaming torches.'

'I don't even know what's going on any more!' Laura protests, grabbing at his rope-burnt wrist. 'You can't just leave me here!'

There's a growl way too close over Dean's shoulder for comfort. He yanks away from Laura, biting his lip at the pain of his skin (she has sharp fingernails) and realises very quickly he has basically no choice here but to burn something he's wearing. 

Dean has never stripped his shirt off so fast in his life as he does now.

The stupid lighter takes this moment to fuck up and not light. He's flicking it frantically with his thumb trying to get the flint to catch but all it does is make little 'zzzt' noises, and the wendigo's sniggering at him because whatever residual human it has in it apparently has a sense of humour, and Dean's just about ready to go toe-to-toe with it with just his penknife when there's a noise like a bachelorette party with a foghorn and Sam, Jo, and the three wannabe Wiccans burst in with torches and big sticks, all bellowing at once.

Everything gets a bit confused after that. 

***

'Oh my God, it _stinks_ ,' says Xanthe, wrinkling her little pug nose. They're all standing (or lying in a sort of heap, in the case of their last still-comatose rescuee) outside the merrily-burning shack with the wendigo inside. Hopefully the surrounding forest is too damp to catch light too. Dean doesn't have the energy to put out a forest fire, or (more likely) call the fire service and then escape with Jo and a moose in tow.

'At least we're kinda warm now,' Leda offers. She wraps her arms around herself anyway. Somewhere over behind them, the sun is rising all pink and gold through the dark trees. Right about now Dean would ideally like to be crawling into bed, but he still has to get his brother unmoosed. 'That was scary,' she adds.

Jo pats Leda on the shoulder. 'You did good,' she says.

'You all did good,' Dean says, feeling proud until Sam snorts and runs a slobbery nose through Dean's hair like he's somehow proud of _Dean_. 'Gross, dude.'

Sam rolls his eyes and nudges him. Dean has to scrabble to clutch at Sam's shoulder in order to stay on his feet, and only mostly succeeds - he kind of domino-effects into Jo, who punches him in the arm and smiles sweetly. Dean coughs and straightens his collar like nothing happened. 'No but seriously. Nice job with the burninating, ladies.'

'Yes, not bad,' says Artemis from behind them. 

Everyone turns and gasps in sync like a, well, like a Greek chorus. 

Artemis stands in what would probably be called full splendour if she weren't still wearing plaid, with her crossbow and a pack of hounds and all, with a backdrop of the cloud-streaked dawn sky.

Dean attempts to step in front of everyone else and realises too late that you can't stand protectively in front of eight people and a moose - all you can do is look like you're about to square up for an 80s music-video dance-off. Artemis snorts at him, and then looks at Jo. 

'I told you you were one of mine,' she says, and smiles.

Jo steps up to stand next to Dean, and puts her hand on her hip, her other hand still cradling her shotgun like she has been pretty much all this time. 'I'm not anyone's,' she says, tipping her chin up defiantly. 'But we got the job done - so that means you turn Sam back, right?'

'Naturally,' says Artemis, looking insulted. 'I pay my debts. But that's not the point. The point is that you and these girls stalked that thing and killed it. Yourselves.'

'You sound surprised,' says Laura, piping up from the back of the pack. 'I don't exactly know who you are and I'm not sure I buy all this bull about you being Artemis, but actually I think if we'd just known that thing was out there to start with, we could have done something about it ages ago. So why didn't you tell us? You know. If you're our patron and all?'

She puts her head to one side, and shrugs. Dean nearly applauds her. 

Artemis scowls. 'I wasn't allowed to directly interfere in its hunts, and none of you had the skills. You bake, or keep house. You study sociology! You aren't hunters.'

Leda snorts. 'How are we ever supposed to learn if no-one shows us?' she points out. 

There's a beat, and then 'You gotta admit, they've got a point,' Dean says.

Artemis glares at him like she can set him on fire to match the wendigo, and then the glare turns into a wolfish kind of smile. 'Good,' she says, directly to Dean. ' _Then I hope you take it to heart._ ' 

And with that, she snaps her fingers, and disappears. 

There's a squelchy thudding noise, and Dean whips around only to find Sam, fully human and buck-ass nude, collapsed in the mud with his hands and feet twitching in the centre of an attentive half-circle audience of girls. 

'Oh for -' Dean grumbles, and strips off his plaid to hand to Sam. Sam just sort of stares at him pitifully for a moment, and then tries to push himself up off the ground. 

'My legs are bending the wrong way,' he says in a rough, scratchy voice, staring down at his own knees. Dean hauls him to his feet and stands pointedly in front of him while he ties the plaid shirt around his waist. 

'Alright, let's get you home,' Dean says when Sam's junk isn't quite so visible. Sam kind of looks a bit disoriented, and Dean can _feel_ his protective big brother mode initialising. He turns to Laura and Xanthe, who've kind of taken charge of the Wicca group, rather than fussing too much over his brother. 'What are you guys gonna do now?' he asks them. 

Laura folds her arms. 'Get Veronica, Thetis, and our Jane Doe there down to town for some medical attention, first,' she says. 'That's the most important thing. Probably tell our families we're still alive, I guess? Also put out that fire before it spreads.'

'And then, I think we need to have a serious talk with the rest of the group,' says Xanthe with a determined set to her jaw. Dean's glad he's not a senior member of their ... what? Pack? Coven? Herd, maybe, given the whole deer-worship? Group, anyway. 

'And then get gun licenses!' says Leda, in a way that makes it hard to tell if she's joking or not. Andromache kicks her in the shins. Dean squints at them and starts to suspect they might be sisters. 

Laura glares at both of them, but when she turns back to Dean her expression is stubborn. 'Are there more things like that,' she nods at the burning building with the wendigo inside, 'out there?'

Jo, on Dean's other side, huffs a laugh. 'More than you know,' she says. 'Way more than you wanna know.'

Leda puts her hand on her hip. 'Then we have to do something about it, don't we?' she says, like it's just that easy. 'You guys can't be everywhere, and why shouldn't we clean up the messes around here?'

'We're not the only hunters in the country,' Sam says, and his voice is still like sandpaper but he seems to have perked up a bit at least. 'And you guys'll get yourselves killed if you just go off without any training. But ...' He squints, thinking. Dean has missed that squint, but it doesn't last long. Sam smiles instead, and that's even more of a relief. 'I've got an idea. Anyone got a pen?'

Dean watches Sam scribble a phone number on Laura's hand in ballpoint pen. 'Give our friend Bobby a call,' he says. 'He'll at least get you guys started.'

'And don't take any shit from him,' Jo says. 'Or from anyone else, either.'

***

A couple of years later, Dean overhears Bobby on the phone to someone called Leda, telling her there's a rawhead terrorising some town even Dean's never heard of and could she and 'the girls' take care of it, and he feels a bit of a flash of pride even though he didn't do much more to set them up than not get them killed.

And every time their current cockroach of the week, a crossroads demon called Crowley, calls Sam 'moose' like he thinks it's a ginormous insult, Sam has to tread on Dean's foot to stop him laughing out loud.


End file.
